Sydney and I had been wondering when religious conservatives in the United States would get wind of what Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy was actually about. We've long expected an anti-Pullman crusade to succeed the mostly defunct anti-Harry Potter crusade. Our wait seems to be over; according to Snopes.com, the e-mail crusade has begun.
Sydney read from The Amber Spyglass, the concluding and most overtly anti-religious volume of the trilogy, at the Oct. 8 Banned Books Reading at Frostburg State University, sponsored by the English department and the campus chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. Several folks said they weren't familiar with those books, and several who were said they never heard of any controversy surrounding them. That will change soon enough, with the movie of The Golden Compass coming out this winter.
Here's Pullman's website. Fantasy fans who haven't read His Dark Materials definitely should. It's a marvel from beginning to end, and as I read, I kept thinking, "He'd never get away with this in the United States."
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Fox News ran an interview this morning with the mouthpiece of some Catholic organization which, apparently, is "outraged" about the "bigotry" in "The Golden Compass" and thinks this movie is dangerous because it's a way to "introduce kids to atheism." The FoxNewsbabe conducting the interview also brought up how The Atheists are angry because the message of atheism was watered down for the movie version, and how that just proves that this is bigotry against Catholics. On a happier note, the organization's spokesperson was pleased that the movie recognized that Catholicism is the "Cadillac of religions."
That was pretty much where my brain broke.
I was wondering when the theocrat fringe would notice the Pullman books, too. Guess it had to happen sooner or later.
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